Terrorism in Perspective

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
1

Why the war on terror is a ridiculous hoax…

Global Terrorism Statistics Released
Clearinghouse Data Show Sharp Rise
Washington Post - April 28, 2005
The U.S. government released statistics yesterday documenting a dramatic increase in terrorist attacks last year and a death toll of close to 2,000 people around the globe, a disclosure made a week after the State Department said it would publish its congressionally mandated annual survey of international terrorism without the statistical portrait it has always included.

In comparison:

According to the CDC, cigarette smoking kills 438,000 people annually - (1 out of every 5 deaths). Out of that the California Environmental Protection Agency estimates secondhand smoke exposure causes approximately 3,400 lung cancer deaths and 22,700-69,600 heart disease deaths annually among adult nonsmokers in the United States.
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/Factsheets.htm

(Put another way - over 22,000 nonsmokers killed annually by biological terrorist attacks in the U.S. alone)

Globally:
Smoking-Related Death Estimate Rises
CBS - Oct 11, 2002
The World Health Organization raised its estimate of smoking-related deaths Friday, saying 4.9 million people die each year and warning that its projection of 10 million deaths annually by 2030 was too low.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/11/health/main525264.shtml

And the latest tobacco industry news:
Nicotine Up Sharply In Many Cigarettes
Some Brands More Than 30% Stronger
Washington Post - August 31, 2006
The study, reported by the Boston Globe, found that 92 of 116 brands tested had higher nicotine yields in 2004 than in 1998, and 52 had increases of more than 10 percent.

The nicotine in Marlboro products, preferred by two-thirds of high school smokers, increased 12 percent. Kool lights increased 30 percent.

News Flash: Cigarettes still legal.

Other ways to die.

Death toll from road accidents 390 times that from terrorism: study
The body count from road accidents in developed economies is 390 times higher than the death toll in these countries from international terrorism, says a study appearing in a specialist journal, Injury Prevention.
In 2001, as many people died every 26 days on American roads as died in the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it says.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2005/11/30/051130231753.72wocvgo.html

In Hospital Deaths from Medical Errors at 195,000 per Year USA
Aug 2004
“The equivalent of 390 jumbo jets full of people are dying each year due to likely preventable, in-hospital medical errors, making this one of the leading killers in the U.S.” said Dr. Samantha Collier, HealthGrades’ vice president of medical affairs.

Doctors Are The Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Causing 250,000 Deaths Every Year
Journal American Medical Association Vol 284 July 26, 2000
http://www.chekinstitute.com/articles.cfm?select=7

Painkiller [Vioxx] Linked to 140,000 Heart Attacks in Patients
The Independent U.K. - January 2005
A blockbuster drug launched five years ago as a revolutionary treatment for arthritis may have caused up to 140,000 heart attacks in US patients of whom 44 per cent died, scientists said yesterday, making it the world’s worst drug disaster.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/012705K.shtml

Imagine if all these deaths were televised over and over again in dramatic fashion, the overly hyped threat of terrorism might seem rather silly. Over and over and over again we keep hearing how we haven’t been attacked again in the last five years.

That should give you quite a few things to think about considering they left our borders wide open for over four of those years. Either they don’t really care if we get attacked again - or they know there really is no threat. Otherwise those five years of not being attacked again is PURELY INCIDENTAL.

The enemy is YOU - refuse to be scared.

White House Proposal Would Expand Authority of Military Courts
Washington Post - August 2, 2006
A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such “commissions” to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal.

The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court’s jurisdiction. The two provisions would be likely to put more individuals than previously expected before military juries, officials and independent experts said.

The draft proposed legislation, set to be discussed at two Senate hearings today, is controversial inside and outside the administration because defendants would be denied many protections guaranteed by the civilian and traditional military criminal justice systems.

Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors.

Detainees would also not be guaranteed the right to be present at their own trials, if their absence is deemed necessary to protect national security or individuals.

Marshals: Innocent People Placed On ‘Watch List’ To Meet Quota
Marshals Say They Must File One Surveillance Detection Report, Or SDR, Per Month
July 21, 2006
“Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft… and they did nothing wrong,” said one federal air marshal.
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/9559707/detail.html

Pay too much and you could raise the alarm
The Providence Journal
FEB-06
All they did was pay down their debt. They didn’t call a suspected terrorist on their cell phone. They didn’t try to sneak a machine gun through customs.

They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast.
http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=RAISEALARM-02-28-06

2

You’re right, in fact, since more people die in auto related deaths than are murdered in the US we should make driving illegal and stop enforcing laws against murder.

3

In fact, you wouldn’t believe the number of people who die worldwide from living. We should really try to do something about that.

4

Cigarrettes aren’t going to get better at killing us. They aren’t working night and day to find ways to more effeciently kill us. They aren’t actively trying to develop ways to kill hundreds of thousands of us at once. They aren’t trying to find ways to cripple our economy. Cigarrettes are inanimate objects that people use to slowly commit suicide. The comparison is retarded.

5

[quote]doogie wrote:
Cigarrettes aren’t going to get better at killing us. They aren’t working night and day to find ways to more effeciently kill us. They aren’t actively trying to develop ways to kill hundreds of thousands of us at once. They aren’t trying to find ways to cripple our economy. Cigarrettes are inanimate objects that people use to slowly commit suicide. The comparison is retarded.[/quote]

I’m not trying to make a DIRECT comparison - DEAD is DEAD. If 22,000 - 70,000 people (nonsmokers) in the US per year die from secondhand smoke, that’s about 40X the number of people who were killed by terrorists in the ENTIRE WORLD in 2005.

On top of that they’ve secretly raised the nicotine content substantially in recent years - apparently they are getting better at killing. People are trying to quit and they’re being made more addictive.

As for the economy…
New CDC figures assert that smokers cost the economy nearly $94 billion yearly in lost productivity. An additional $89 billion is estimated spent on public and private healthcare combined. The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids Taxpayers says each American household spends $596 a year in federal and state taxes due to smoking.

Secondhand Smoke Costs U.S. Economy $10 Billion Annually
http://www.mindfully.org/Health/2005/Secondhand-Smoke-Cost17aug05.htm

As far as terrorism cost to our economy, that’s the biggest scam yet on the American people…
‘9/11 cost US economy $660 bn dollars so far’
November 16, 2005
The $660 billion include $45 billion of direct costs incurred in 2001 from the attacks, $175 billion of indirect costs and $442 billion of security-related costs, the report added.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1547422,00050004.htm

Security is the new booming industry - but it’s not “if” but “when” we’ll be attacked again as they say. In other words no different then before 9/11 but hundreds of billions of dollars spent on security measures that won’t stop an attack bigger than 9/11.

But it will transform America into a genuine police state, fascist dictatorship - but I’m sure you’ll be just fine with that.

Hell the whole airline industry is taking a beating not because people are afraid of terrorism - they just don’t feel like getting x-rayed, strip searched and barred from turning on their iPod and taking a bottle of fucking water on the plane.

Now that the “terrorists” have us terrified of bottled water, I think it’s time to throw in the towel and say they’ve finally won.

The only thing left is air - soon security will make you completely exhale before boarding the plane because you can’t bring any of your own air onboard.

America’s Secret Police?
Intelligence experts warn that a proposal to merge two Pentagon intelligence units could create an ominous new agency.

Spies Among Us
Despite a troubled history, police across the nation are keeping tabs on ordinary Americans
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060508/8homeland.htm

Passengers’ chat will be recorded to foil hijackers
Air passengers could have their conversations and movements monitored as work intensifies to design the terrorist-proof aeroplane.

Researchers in Britain and Europe are looking at technology that would see a comprehensive network of microphones and cameras installed throughout the aircraft, including the lavatory, which would be linked to a computer.

6

its called fearmongering, how do you think the politicians plan on staying in power?

If I remember correctly you have roughly the same odds of being hit by a meteor as being killed in a terrorist attack (for US citizens).

So how many people do you know that have been hit by a meteor?

7

JTF-

Unlike most of your conspiracy-theory posts, I think this one has some actual points to make (i.e. that certain people are inflating/constantly reminding us of the terrorist threat in order to get us to vote a certain way); however, I don’t see how anything you’ve said adds up to the war on terror being a “hoax.”

That is, I agree with you that people are frightened of terrorism vastly out of proportion to its actual danger, just as they are disproportionately frightened of air travel or West Nile encephalitis while not frightened enough of more statistically dangerous behaviors like driving while drunk or overtired or otherwise impaired or smoking cigarettes or allowing themselves to be obese, BUT this is the result of a common and long-recognized cognitive bias called the “availability heuristic,” in which people overestimate the probability of a particularly vivid or emotionally charged outcome.

Other cognitive biases that may be of interest to the OP and his ilk include: the disconfirmation bias (the tendency for people to be more critical of evidence that contradicts their prior beliefs), the confirmation bias (the tendency for people to seek out information that supports their preconceptions or to interpret information in a way that confirms their preconceptions), the clustering illusion (tendency to see patterns where there are none), the observer-expectancy effect (the tendency of a researcher to unconsciously manipulate an experiment or MISINTERPRET DATA in order to find the expected result), and, last but certainly not least, the overconfidence effect.

It’s comforting (read: facile) somehow to believe that the world is governed by conspiracies and that you know better than everyone else. It’s frightening to realize how complicated and unpredictable and difficult to understand the world actually is…

8

[quote]JustTheFacts wrote:
On top of that they’ve secretly raised the nicotine content substantially in recent years - apparently they are getting better at killing. People are trying to quit and they’re being made more addictive.
[/quote]

Could the increase in nicotine content could be in response to restricted times and places when and where people may smoke? For many smokers, an increase in nicotine per cigarette could be benign or beneficial.

If an addict can get his nicotine fix with fewer cigarettes, that might mean the same amount of nicotine with less tar and lesser quantities of other carcinogens.

9

“Man cannot stand too much reality” T.S. Elliot

The world is an inherantly chaotic place. From our continual inner monologue onwards, humans attempt to place order on this outwardly chaotic world.

By making a big issue out of a given topic (terrorism) and depending on the intellectual capacity of the general public, we are able to create the illusion of safety - a rather nifty coping mechanism. Don’t delve too deep into the psyche, you might scare people.

10

[quote]holifila wrote:
You’re right, in fact, since more people die in auto related deaths than are murdered in the US we should make driving illegal and stop enforcing laws against murder.

[/quote]

That’s what you do already. It’s harder to get a drivers license than a gun license.

11

[quote]Wreckless wrote:
holifila wrote:
You’re right, in fact, since more people die in auto related deaths than are murdered in the US we should make driving illegal and stop enforcing laws against murder.

That’s what you do already. It’s harder to get a drivers license than a gun license.
[/quote]

Good Lord - you are just a regular little liar. Or ignorant. Or both.

12

[quote]Wreckless wrote:
holifila wrote:
You’re right, in fact, since more people die in auto related deaths than are murdered in the US we should make driving illegal and stop enforcing laws against murder.

That’s what you do already. It’s harder to get a drivers license than a gun license.
[/quote]

Where? Even in my home state of Tx., where we love our guns, its much easier to get a driver’s licence.

In fact, I think you need a driver’s licence to get a gun license.

13

[quote]JTF said
On top of that they’ve secretly raised the nicotine content substantially in recent years…[/quote]

If you know about it, how is it a secret?

14

Interesting post on terrorism. The only counter I would make to the point is that terrorism is a preventable crime. If organizations and governments make a concerted effort, terrorist acts can be prevented and thier effects can be contained. It is nearly impossible to prevent a determined individual from committing an act of terrorism, but it takes a great deal of preperation and personnel to pull off the spectacular type of attack that will gain national attention.